WordPress to Drupal?
Until recently, I adored WordPress. I’ve been teaching groups of artists and photographers to make websites and blogs using the free and easy WordPress.com package, which are so much the best offering out there to get going quickly. Magically easy, most of the templates are rather beautiful, and there’s enough customisation to make every site look different.
Then the first WordCamp UK came along, and in with the planning came enough cartoony controlling behaviours to begin a slow turnaround. Where were we women? Other halves, someone to do today’s equivalent of making the tea. As experts in our own fields, as co-workers in the big open source adventure? No. Ideas and suggestions were ignored, forum posts were skipped, and then fell under a welter of geek-talk and micro-chat. In the end, it proved impossible to go to the actual event, and probably that was a good thing, on balance.
But apart from a newly burgeoning UK community that seems to want autocratic geek hierachies, obsess about ways to increase traffic and the dreaded and ghastly monetisation, is WordPress itself broken?
In a matter of weeks since a major overhaul resulting in 2.5, version 2.6 has come out, and it seems that 2.5 is no longer being supported. Version 2.5 is okay, it mostly works, but the back end isn’t better organised or clearer than 2.3, and the image uploader is much worse. It hardly ever uploads a photo to a post first time, and often usually the code has to be typed in by hand. The much touted Gallery function, which would be marvellous on this site, doesn’t work properly either, looks ugly when it’s typed in, and the default links are all wrong, again with no way to change them except by typing.
The one function that is better in 2.5 over 2.3 is the ability to upload more than one image at a time. Is there anything else that’s better, really? If you can think of anything the Romans did for us WordPress does better in 2.5 or in 2.6, than in 2.3, please post it in the comments here. I’d love to know.
It takes some time to upgrade: all the plugins need switching off, backups need making and then it all needs putting back together afterwards. And there is always a plugin or an add-on that doesn’t work afterwards, since WordPress isn’t giving its developer community enough time to catch up. I have two blogs or three still on 2.3 which unfortunately have been dropped because there just isn’t time to upgrade them all.
And people are complaining about the feeds sometimes not working, and the templates are just well, not being produced for 2.5 or 2.6. A clean 3 column with plenty of width in the main area is getting hard to find unless CSS faffing is in order, and that’s hardly the point of using a no-coding system.
But why Drupal?
Three years ago (a long time in blogland) me and one Mr Lunatic Fringe aka Phil Ackley from Anchorage, had a blog called Things That Moved. It documented visually and in writing, a host of broken down farm machinery, planes, and dead motor cars, interspersed with the occasional corpse. Beautiful rusting heaps and shiny disintegrating chrome, with smatterings of gore. Things That Moved was built on Drupal.
A long time ago WordPress was simpler, and Drupal was much more complicated. Daunting, even. Now, it just looks very beautiful so perhaps it’s time to give it another try.
And of course there’s Angie.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Temporary Hiatus
Things are afoot, including yet another template change after receiving several complaints about this one. Yes, the links are hard to see and the sidebar is squished, and yes some of the SEO seems to’ve suddenly gone a bit squishy.
Posts to come include:
• an interview with Pierfrancesco Celada
• Answers to “Film or Digital?” and “Good membership organisations for early career photographers?”
• a review of Louise Taylor’s new exhibition in Newton Aycliffe.
• a look at Laura Goodman’s new series of photographs from squats at the NO:ID Gallery.
• news on progress with The Photography Place.
• scans of some darkroom prints, both conventional black and white and some lith prints.
• notes and future plans from the Graft Websites for Artists courses last weekend.
• reviews of the Ricoh GR film and digital point-and-shoot cameras.
.. and a whole lot more.
Back in a couple of days, folks. Be good.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Open for business
We’ve finally transited: the awkward in-between stuff is over, and it’s time to build the content here. To paraphrase The (mighty) Who: here’s the new site, same as the old site! But with stability, few(er) outages, no 404s and on its own domain name.
We’re going to concentrate on photography news from the North-east of England, and occasionally from wider afield, plus reviews of local shows, interviews with early career photographers, short features celebrating photographers who influence our own work, especially those who still live in and photograph the region.
By region, we mean Teesside, Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Northumberland, with occasional forays into Yorkshire and Cumbria.
Planned posts include reviews of the local degree shows, a glimpse at the HCB in Bradford, The Ormerod Award 2008 prizewinner and a look to the future of a few of the region’s rising stars.
Please feel free to let us know what you’re up to. If we like your work, we’ll write about it.
Popularity: 27% [?]